Nancy Duarte’s new book resonate arrived in my mail box a few days ago, and I’ve been racing through it ever since.  It should immediately join the shelf of great books for serious students of public speaking; it’s destined to become another classic like her earlier book, slide:ology. 

What’s innovative about resonate is that it incorporates insights from storytelling experts like Joseph Campbell, Robert McKee, and Syd Field from the mythological and movie worlds into a straightforward presentation development system (including lots of yellow sticky notes) to enable you to design a presentation as compelling as any Hollywood movie – or almost.   Duarte is one who gets the idea that speeches need the same techniques and structural devices that make movies interesting.  Situation, complication, resolution.  Tension and release.  The audience’s journey.  Good speechwriters need to know and use these concepts – and Nancy makes them clear and usable for you. 

This book is as beautiful, of course, as slide:ology.  Nancy derives inspiration from a number of great speakers from Martin Luther King, Jr to Benjamin Zander.  Her discussions of these speakers and their speeches are useful and to the point.  And she keeps clearly in view the goal of all this effort:  to change the world with compelling presentations.  For the serious student of public speaking, resonate is a must-have.  I’ll have more blogs on some of the subjects raised in resonate,  but I wanted to get out early notice that this book, just released, is a winner.